


Vulgar and Violent

by orphan_account



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Child Abuse, Child Neglect, Gen, Pre-Canon, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-04
Updated: 2017-12-04
Packaged: 2019-02-10 09:25:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12909048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: A character study of Max's history with profanity.(When Max first learned to talk, the first word out of his mouth was a firm “shit.”)





	Vulgar and Violent

When Max first learned to talk, the first word out of his mouth was a firm “shit.”

He didn’t know what it meant, and he stumbled over the _shh_ noise, but he’d heard it shouted enough times either around him or at him to know it meant _angry_. Angry as in he’d colored on the walls again, angry as in he’d knocked over his mother’s favorite vase, angry as in he’d cried and hollered when his grandmother tried to pick him up, angry as in his father had been drinking the weird bad-smelling stuff from the soda-cans that was definitely _not_ soda; he knew this because he’d tried it before when it was left sat squatly on the end table in the living room. He’d heard _shit_ then, too.

So when his mother had taken his favorite toy, his stuffed bear, from his grimy palms after he’d gotten his dress suit filthy with mud at some uncle’s funeral, his brain turned red-hot furious, angryangryangry and all he could fathom to spit this anger from his mouth before he was forced to take a taste of the fury on his tongue was, “SHIT!”

His mother had stopped where she was, same as the other children- cousins, nieces and nephews of faces he couldn’t remember. They were all shocked still. The word felt right in his mouth, good and solid, so he said it again. “Shit!”

This time, his mother’s mouth went slack open, hanging loosely. _Flies,_ he thought gleefully, remembering what his grandmother told him when his jaw hung vapidly.

“What?” she asked him breathlessly. His father was beginning to look over at this point, as well as several aunties. They were looking and whispering and glancing and it made him angrier angrier _angrier_ , so he continued on.   
  
“Shit!” he repeated. “Shit! Shit shit shit shit-”

_SMACK!_

The right side of his face was numb, and then-

_painpainpainpainpain_

Next thing he knew, his mother was picking him up by the hair, leaving his baby-fat body to hang limply in the air like some old ragdoll. It _hurt,_ and he began to scream up a storm, pulling at his mother’s arms and scratching them, ripping at them with barren and bitten nails. The aunties were looking now, full angry stares, and he began to howl anew with the unsympathetic glares that were heavy upon his back.

“SHIT!” he howled, even as his father began to approach, even as his cousins squealed and cried and hollered in the mud behind him, even as his uncles stared and stared with not-soda cans clutched crumpling in their palms. “SHIT! SHI-I-I-I-IT!”

\--

“Fuck you!” he yelled into his pillow, savage and raw and grating on his throat as if fire was lashing across his tongue.

Max was seven, and he had been home alone for five days.

He was good at rationing: a piece of toast for breakfast, maybe an apple if his stomach continued to gnaw heartlessly at his insides like so many leeches in his belly, some beefaroni or cheap canned noodles for lunch, and a cheese sandwich for dinner. Sometimes he let himself eat a can of peaches for dessert. Regardless, the food was near gone. His parents had never kept much food in the pantry. He’d run out of milk on the second day, cheese on the fourth, Chef Boyardee cans on the third. There hadn’t been much left in the apple juice canister- and then when it was finished it was the old routine, plastic goes in recycling, wash it out first, swish the water before pouring it back down the drain.

There was some cans at the tippy-top of the cabinet, but even climbing on the granite countertops his mother had spent so much money on didn’t have him able to reach them. He could use the can opener, at least, and he knew the way to turn on the stovetop’s flames, knew not to touch the blue fire that erupted from within. Max could work the expensive dishwasher his father had gotten after getting a promotion, scrub a pan and scramble an egg as long as he stood on tippytoes. What he couldn’t do was buy more food.

His father had been up and gone one morning when he’d woken up. His mother was away on a business trip, something about investments and mergers and if he was good, she’d bring him back a souvenir from Hong Kong. He didn’t care, but when he told her that her that her face had gone all lemony like she needed a drink of water, and she’d left without saying goodbye in the morning. Max didn’t know where his father had gone. There wasn’t a note left or a sitter called or even a message on the answering machine indicating his whereabouts. The booze was still in the cabinets, so it probably wasn’t a bender, but he couldn’t be sure. His clothes were scattered just lazily around the room as ever, so Max couldn’t even tell if anything was missing. Wherever he was, he wasn’t here, and Max was alone.

It wasn’t all bad. He could stay up on his computer as long as he wanted, could eat in the living room while watching TV like his mother would never allow if she were home, could sleep until noon and lounge around the house like a cat all day if he chose. It was summer, so he didn’t even have to worry about school. He had long since felt out this particular form of freedom, knew the ups of late night R-rated movies and the downs of running out of bread from the loaf, had long since learned how to do laundry and tuck himself into bed.

Still, he found himself screaming obscenities into his racecar pillowcase.

“I fucking hate you!” he howled at nothing, body contorting with childish anger. His fists were in the air, thumping wildly into his pillow. “I hate you, I HATE YOU! You always fucking _DO THIS_! FUCK YOU! FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU-”

Like a horrible anthem he shouted it, screamed it, a wailing banshee in the 5 o’clock dusk of the evening, a suburban wight haunting an abandoned house up the hill. His body was tired, his mind was tired, but he was just so _angry,_ fierce and fiery- he’d run out of _bread,_ he’d run out of _peaches_ and _beefaroni_ and now all he had left were saltines smeared with peanut butter or ketchup and Halloween candy that had escaped his unsupervised gorging.

He couldn’t conceive his own anger, couldn’t possibly imagine its depths, so he pounded and wailed and screeched until his lungs felt they would give out and his knuckles had started bleeding from scraping the edge of the wall too many times on their way to the pillow. Finally he was there, at his end, limp and exhausted.

“I don’t even like racecars,” he fiercely sobbed into his pillow, before slipping off into the darkness of sleep.

When morning came, he found his father in his study in the same position he’d been in before he’d left, passed out at his desk with drool slipping down his cheek.

\--

He’d run away from home again.

His knees were tucked in towards his body, rain drenching the designer jeans he’d always despised. His head was ducked under the plastic of a playground tube while a storm screamed angrily around his little sanctuary. Water was slipping through the cracks, but he was warm enough under two sweatshirts and his father’s windbreaker. He was nearly hot, even, scrunched up inside the mustard yellow tube, sneakers tucked up underneath him.

It was dark, it was storming severely, and it was the dead middle of winter.

Max hadn’t felt more satisfied in months.

He’d called his dad a motherfucker and gotten a fist to the face. It had _hurt,_ in a way his mother’s warning slaps to his cheeks never had, leaving a wallowing tumor of a bruise up and down the side of his face, purple-yellow, with drips of brutish reds and sickly browns. He’d run away, because of _course_ he had, any nine year old who’d been punched up the side of his face by his own drunken father would. His nose was left dribbling bits of blood, even now, trapped in the slippery confines of the play tube.

He had his backpack- some money, a charger, his phone, his… bear- and he had his wits, and that was all. That was all Max had ever needed, really, because he’d never been provided with much more. He had some granola bars, of course, and a water bottle, but he’d worn through those six hours ago, since his dad hadn’t exactly been kind enough to cook breakfast before knocking the shit out of him.

His father had never hit him before.

“Motherfucker,” he whispered with the ferocity of a warrior to himself, “motherfucker. Motherfucker! Asshole!”

Vulgarities had always felt freer on his tongue than anything else, so he spat them out more, chewed them up and tasted them on his tastebuds before spitting it into the ears of his mother or father or school administrator or whoever else was unfortunate enough to be around when they came up his throat.

The rain was trailing rivers down the map of his neck and back. His bear- his stupid, _stupid_ bear- was tucked into the inside of the first sweatshirt, making him look pregnant. The thought made him want to laugh, so he did, near hysterical, almost.

He was tired. He’d been wandering around all day after leaving the house at ten in the morning, hissing at passing children and making piercing-eyed adults cross the street with the fierceness in his gait. His legs felt like heavy weights, dragging him under the surface of an unwavering sea. He was tired. He was tired. He was so, so fucking tired of his father drinking and his mother leaving and the kids at school whispering and the counselors asking and he was just so tired.

Maybe he could stay gone this time. It wouldn’t be too hard, he could handle himself. He’d been gone upwards of a week before cops had caught him stealing a Milky Way from a local trashy gas station. They’d taken him, kicking and screaming, a demon child, up the front steps of his home and to the fiercely furious eyes of his mother, who’d come home once his father had bothered to inform her he was missing again.

This wasn’t the first time. It probably wouldn’t be the last.

\--

“What do we do?”

“-send him off to boarding school-”

“It’s summer, dear, we can’t-”

“-if _you_ bothered to be here-”

“He’s just a problem child, it can’t fucking be helped-”

“Summer camp?”

“-that place you went to as a kid?”

“Campbell-”

“What other choice do we have?”  


**Author's Note:**

> ill probably write a continuation of this


End file.
